Absorbent articles for absorbing and handling body exudates, such as diapers, sanitary napkins, panty liners, bed pads and the like are widely known in the art. Due to the different hygienic needs articles like sanitary napkins are often individually wrapped, whereas diapers, panty liners or bed pads are often packaged as a stack in a common package. It has been recognized that changing such absorbent articles can be a hygienic challenge, as portions of the user's body need to be cleaned, as well as the hands of the person changing the article may become contaminated. This can be embarrassing and can soil the replacement absorbent article or the user's closing or other possessions.
It is widely known in the art to use wipes for cleaning of skin portions, which were soiled with body exudates. For instance the use of moistened baby wipes is widely practiced. Such wipes are generally made of a textile material and are oftentimes provided with a moist lotion, which eases cleaning and delivery skin benefits to the skin portion treated therewith. For maintaining the moistness of the wipe these wipes may be packaged in wrappers with barrier properties. Exemplary packaged moistened wipes are disclosed e.g. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,428,477. Typically, cleaning wipes are packaged in stacks in a common package, such as in case of moist baby wipes. In other instances, such as in case of cleaning wipes supplied in airplanes, there is only one wipe individually packaged in a wrapper.
Currently, when attempting to change a soiled absorbent article, such as a loaded sanitary napkin, the user or the person changing the article has to carry the package containing the article for changing as well as another package containing the wipe for cleaning. This is clearly disadvantageous because opening/handling and disposing of a multiplicity of items and especially packages is required. Solutions to this problem are suggested by e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,350,067; 4,808,175 or 5,569,230. These documents suggest individual absorbent articles comprising an individually-packaged moistened wipe in or on the package of the absorbent article. In other words, absorbent article and wet wipe are always fixedly combined with each other. These combined absorbent articles are an improvement over prior approaches because the number of parts and also waste parts, which must be handled, is reduced as the packages of the absorbent article and the wipe are connected with each other. However, receptacles for the cleaning wipes disclosed in the prior art are conventional pouches. When such pouches are opened by the user for dispensing the cleaning wipe, such as by breaking seal lines or the like, the pouch is converted into a flat piece of material. Hence, the cleaning wipe is not securely contained anymore directly after the process of opening the pouch and can thus fall on the floor unintentionally.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a package for a wipe which is easy to handle and to open and which provides protection for the wipe from falling out of the opened package.
Further, it would be desirable to provide combined absorbent articles being provided with an additional hygiene article, such as a wipe, wherein the combined absorbent article has the advantages of increased convenience by reducing the number of items to be handled during the change of the absorbent article, while offering improved handling and better hygiene.